If your company was one of the 375 government contractors or subcontractors who recently received a Scheduling Letter from the Office of Federal Contractor Compliance Programs (OFCCP), you're probably not reading this post. You're too busy scrambling to pull together responses to the 22 items in the Scheduling Letter and Itemized Listing and making sure your affirmative action plans are up to date.

But if you didn't receive a scheduling order... read on.

Now is a perfect time to check up on your company's compliance with the various requirements imposed on federal contractors and subcontractors, so that you're ready when you do receive notice of an OFCCP audit. Every contractor knows that it must maintain affirmative action plans for minorities and women and for the disabled and protected veterans and that it must file EEO-1 and VETS-4212 forms once a year. But are you confident that you're complying with all the other OFCCP obligations on federal contractors? Here is a quick checklist you can use to make sure your company is in compliance. Are you:

  • Communicating with managers about affirmative action goals in their areas?
  • Tracking your outreach efforts for individuals with disabilities and veterans?
  • Periodically inviting current employees to self-identify as disabled and reminding them of their obligations?
  • Posting jobs with the state employment service delivery system?
  • Documenting reasonable accommodations provided to employees?
  • Assessing your applicants, hires, promotions and terminations to ensure that there is no discrimination against protected groups?
  • Posting all the notices required by the OFCCP, including the OFCCP supplement to the EEO is the Law poster, your affirmative action policy statement, the Employee Rights Under the National Labor Relations Act poster and the E-Verify Participation and Right to Work posters?
  • Updating your Pay Transparency Policy Statement on both the posting and in your employee handbook to address the OFCCP's new requirement that the Policy Statement include a citation to the regulations?
  • Including the clauses required by the OFCCP in all your covered subcontracts and purchase orders?

If your company has let some of these requirements slide in the past, now is the time to clean up your compliance – before you're facing a scheduling letter and 30-day deadline from the OFCCP. This is particularly true if any of your compliance efforts will require upgrades or enhancements to your systems (like HRIS (HR Information System) or ATS (applicant Tracking System)) which may take longer to implement.

My company isn't a government contractor, we just sell to on-base stores and through a reseller to GSA...

Though this fallacy permeates the business world, it is just that: a fallacy. The OFCCP provisions are notoriously broad in their applicability, flowing down through all forms of subcontracts. This includes sales to all the various military exchanges (AAFES, NEXCOM/NAVEX, MCX, and the Coast Guard Exchanges) as well as selling to companies reselling your commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) items to the government.

What's the one thing you don't need to worry about right now?

Executive Order 13673. On March 29, 2017, President Trump officially revoked this Executive Order, which required federal contractors to report virtually any labor law violations, provide statements of all hours worked, overtime and deductions to employees each pay period, and eliminate mandatory arbitration agreements with employees.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.